Some new updates will be coming soon.

There seems to be some correspondence between certain patterns I've begun working with elsewhere, and the nature of Flame Fractals, such as rendered with Apophysis. As time permits various examples of fractals as illustrations will be added to the gallery here. To really get serious with the illustration part of it, some new plugins will have to be written.

One of the universal difficulties, as well as blessings, is the difficulty in Apophysis of getting results shaped like the ideas in one's head. As you work with it, there is a creative urge that gets frustrated by the next fractal going off in some other direction. Designers can spend hours tweaking variations until really cool stuff gets tweaked just right.

The easiest path is of course to do something, anything, then from a sampling of what happens, pick out some interesting features and develop further from there. The intuitive approach. Getting those choices to resemble anything in what some might think of as "normal reality" is the tricky part.

Certain plugins provide a means to insert numerical values in formulas such that one can generate what amounts to geometric shapes. If numbers or geometry can illustrate something, then the task of illustration is made easy. However if the concepts are more abstract or there are particular shapes and patterns desired then writing a new plugin becomes one of the best options.

In recent years some very interesting fractal variations and tools have been appearing, and it is possible that some of those new tools might provide really cool illustration capabilities, especially when those tools include fractal design elements.

If this general description catches your attention, please stay tuned and consider designing your own pattern illustrations with your favorite tools. I'd love to collect a small gallery of these examples along with some descriptive materials as to how it was created, and what do the visual elements correspond with in the "real life pattern".

Sometime soon there will be a competition for this illustrative kind of fractal...

More about those patterns soon...